


Ghost Hunters

by stellarel



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:53:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27595772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarel/pseuds/stellarel
Summary: It's halloween, and the Doctor is a ghost hunter now, because Ryan wants to make a youtube video, and the Doctor is the perfect guy for the job, right?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Ghost Hunters

**Author's Note:**

> Hello my dudes. I know I'm late to the halloween party, but I'm here now! Enjoy.

It's Halloween, and the Doctor is a ghost hunter.

Well, of sorts.

It had been Ryan's idea - to go check out some alledgedly haunted places, figure out what's going on, and post the results on his Youtube channel.

Perfect, right?

Part of the process of introducing this idea to the Doctor had been showing her some of the most popular ghost hunting videos on Youtube, to which her responses had been...colourful.

Most of the videos show little to no actual proof of anything, and even the most credible end of the spectrum mainly consists of flickering lights and _maybe_ some garbled noises. 

The Doctor isn't impressed (mainly just bored - these ghost hunters really didn't know how to present information in a compact format), but there are a few videos that stand out to her. One in particular that presents a set of lights that seem to flicker in response to questions, and a barely-there disturbance in the air.

"That's not a ghost, that's a Spectral hive." The Doctor notes with a remarkably uninterested, factual voice.

Both Ryan and Yaz turn to look at her. "A _WHAT_?"

The Doctor turns to meet their eyes, and after a few moments, she slowly blinks and nods. 

"Ah. Outside the range of human vision?" The Doctor asks, squinting her eyes a little and leaning closer to her human friends. "What's the upper limit of your light wavelength intake?" 

"How am I supposed to know that?" Ryan asks, squinting his eyes at the screen again, trying to see the thing that the Doctor apparently could see in there, but they could not. 

"Around 800 nanometres?" The Doctor guesses, now leaning extremely close to Yaz and peering into her left eye through some sort of a miniature magnifying glass that she had, seemingly, produced out of nowhere.

(If the Doctor hadn't already established that her limits of personal space were very flexible, this might have been strange, but actually, this was a pretty average situation for all three of them, all things considered).

"What's yours?" Yaz asks, curious. 

The Doctor shrugs with one shoulder. "Not sure. More than that, apparently. Haven't tested it. Maybe I should." She leans back. "You know, that's why so many of the aliens that visit your planet have such big eyes. They can see everything that lives here."

Yaz furrows her brows at this.

The Doctor tilts her head. "You wouldn't go to a planet where you can only see a fraction of the inhabitants, would you?" She asks, almost absent-mindedly.

Yaz takes a second to consider this. "Well, based on this conversation and the fact that I travel with you, I bet I already have been."

The Doctor opens her mouth to argue, but then decides against it, and instead only smiles, nods a little to herself, and promptly turns her attention towards the TARDIS instead. 

Ryan looks up from the screen. "You know, this is why you should totally be a ghost hunter. You can see things we can't!" He then looks around, "-and I bet you have a ghost detector in here somewhere."

The Doctor squints her eyes a little and almost starts to protest out of habit. 

Almost.

"You can't tell all of Youtube I'm an alien. That would not go over well with UNIT."

Ryan grins.

Yaz crosses her arms. "You think _that_ would be the weirdest thing on Youtube?" She asks, almost sarcastically. 

The Doctor tilts her head, considering this for a moment. "No aliens," she then points at Ryan, "no aliens, and if we find ghosts I get to talk to them first."

(So far, 90% of the "ghosts" the Doctor had ran into, had actually been some sort of alien interference, so their agreement also included that any non-terrestial findings would not end up on Youtube.)

Soon, out of the three of them Yaz is the only one not dressed up like a Ghostbuster.

(Graham wanted no part in this - he says he's too old for Youtube, and too tired to deal with ghosts right now. Besides, he's got Halloween plans already; stay home, watch a couple movies, and hand out candy for the neighborhood kids.

Him and Grace had always been a popular house on their street, with all the decorations Grace always put up, and the more-than-generous amounts of candy they gave out. Graham didn't go to detail when explaining this to the rest of the group, but planned to uphold the tradition. Ryan didn't say anything, and Graham didn't bring it up, either.

Also, one of his old mates had invited himself over to play cards, and this worked very nicely as an excuse to stay home).

Yaz was in charge of choosing the places they'd go to, even though in reality the Doctor was mostly making the decisions. ( She would dismiss suggestions with " _No, that's sacred ground, we can't go muck around in there._ " or, " _Nope, that's raccoons_." or " _No, that's aliens, best not disturb them. Not the friendly kind._ " This particular notion did, of course, include the silent information that at some point in time, the Doctor had already disturbed them, and it hadn't gone well. Yaz made a mental to ask more about this later).

Ryan suggests they should go find Mothman, and the Doctor claims they can't, because they're an endangered species and also highly allergic to humans. 

They end up choosing few pretty ordinary places - your typical haunted house (not the carnival kind, the kind where people actually lived), a part of an old forest that's claimed to be haunted by some sort of an undead deer-demon, and an old abandoned hospital.

(The hospital gets crossed off the list later, too, also by the Doctor and with only a very vague explanation. The look on her face is very definite, though, so the other two don’t argue.)

They arrive at the haunted house first. It was, all in all, a very ordinary house - only with the added bonus that it seemed to have someone haunting the bedrooms. It's the usual story - people keep seeing vaguely humanoid-shaped somethings at night, feel like they're being watched, and have had some extra creepy dreams there. Fear feeds fear, as they say. 

The Doctor has a hunch of what's going on as soon as they arrive - these types of stories, they really often do come down to boring old ordinary things like old wiring and electromagnetic fields and the fact that humans tend to have very active imaginations and rely heavily on pattern recognition in their daily lives and are therefore easily tricked into thinking any vaguely humanoid-shaped thing is, in fact, a Humanoid-Shaped Thing - but in any case, she lets Ryan go all out with the ghost hunting.

(She acts along, and even though she doesn't say it out loud, she enjoys it).

Yaz pretends not to, but they all know she's taking it at least semi-seriously. Traveling with the Doctor had severely uprooted her beliefs about what could and could not exist in the world - having met actual, literal aliens, ghosts didn't seem like such a far-fetched idea anymore. 

The Doctor walks around the dark house, her face practically glued to some sort of a device that beeped steadily.

Ryan is filming, of course, and commenting on everything that happens.

"No ghosts so far," The Doctor does a small, dramatic twirl. "But that doesn't mean they're not here!" She looks up, towards a dusty chandelier. "HELLO GHOSTS!" She calls, "COME SAY HI!" 

Nothing happens for a moment, and the Doctor tilts her head in an exaggerated motion. "We brought snacks!" She adds, not knowing what to do next when no ghosts appear.

Still, no ghosts appear.

"Can ghosts eat snacks?" Ryan asks quietly. 

"Dunno," The Doctor shrugs, "BUT I WOULD LOVE TO FIND OUT! If any ghosts out there want to be a part of an important and tasty science experience, we would love to have you!"

"Are you sure that's smart?" Yaz asks, still trying to figure out if there being actual ghosts was a viable option.

"Why wouldn't it be?" 

"Because you're screaming at ghosts, whose house you have just walked into, and inviting them to come meet us." Yaz reasons, sweeping her flashlight over the closest doorways (still no ghosts - at this point she isn't sure if she's disappointed or relieved).

"Hmm. Good point." The Doctor notes, and then turns around to yell at the staircase, "IF YOU'RE EVIL PLEASE DON'T COME MEET US!"

Yaz furrows her brows. "Do you think that would work?"

"No," The Doctor says, smiling a little, "but if they _are_ evil, I'd like to stop them."

Yaz takes a deep breath. "Of course you would."

The Doctor's little beeping machine, that totally was not a ghost detector, makes an uncharasteristically high beeping sound, and all three of them turn to look at the tiny screen.

"Did we find a ghost?" Ryan asks, excited, re-directing his camera to the small device.

"Hmmmm, no," The Doctor lifts up the device up to her face, "but there is a chicken somewhere within a 5 kilometre radius."

The other two blink at her.

"You found a chicken?" Yaz asks, slowly, with approximately one and a half spaces between each word.

"That's not nearly as fun as a ghost." Ryan joins in, and turns to film the expanse of the room again.

"Unless it's a ghost chicken." The Doctor points out, not lifting her eyes from the device.

There's a beat of silence, until Ryan breaks it.

"Is it?"

"Probably not. Unless I calibrated this wrong, in which case I might have just turned it into one."

Another beat of silence.

Yaz sighs. "You accidentally killed a chicken?"

"Well, hopefully not. But possibly, yes. Probably not, though. I think." 

She then turns a dial on the totally-not-a-ghost-detector, and subsequently, makes the beeping significantly quieter.

Ryan walks around the room, slowly filming everything, which is mostly at this point, darkness, with some extra dark shadows here and there. "Come on, let's check out the rest of the house." 

They follow him into the dark hallway.

"This is where the ghosts are supposed to live?" The Doctor asks once they reach the bedrooms - on either side of the dark and menacing hallway - and she keeps scanning the room with her not-a-ghost-detector. 

Yaz gives this a suspicious glance, worried about the futures of any nearby chicken (and possibly also any nearby humans) but doesn't say anything.

"Yes." Ryan answers, in his best spooky voice, and starts explaining the stories and legends that went with the house. 

After a while, the Doctor adjusts some dials on her device, and the beeping changes pace again.

(She is fully aware that all this could have been done with her sonic screwdriver much easier and much faster, but for the sake of Ryan's Youtube video, she's using old school boring old Earth technology and pretending to be a human, which is why she now has to manually scan for any electromagnetic activity).

"Do you guys feel like we're being watched?" Ryan whispers.

(The Doctor isn't sure when they had started whispering, but they were doing it now, so she adjusts her tone accordingly.)

"No." The Doctor answers, and after a moment, Yaz echoes the sentiment, if somewhat unconvincingly.

This makes the Doctor look up from her device, and study the humans more closely. "Do you?" She asks Ryan, furrowing her eyes a bit.

"No!" He lies, and then almost instantly glances over his shoulder and changes his answer to a quiet 'yes.'

"Hmm." The Doctor looks around, "Interesting." She shines her flashlight over the doorways, all of which display nothing but empty, quiet darkness.

"What about you, Yaz? Feeling normal?"

Yaz takes a moment to answer, which is plenty enough answer for the Doctor in itself. 

"Well, no, but-" Yaz pauses, "-but that's normal, right? Thinking there's something in the darkness when there isn't?"

"Unless there is." The Doctor whispers back.

Yaz turns to look at her, now visibly just a little bit frightened.

"Here," The Doctor instructs, gently placing a hand on each human's shoulder and guiding their movements, "stand back to back and shine your flashlights on each end of the room."

They comply, and take a moment to look around quietly. 

(The moment feels longer than it actually is, but that's probably to be expected in a situation like this. It wasn't any real temporal anomaly, the Doctor had already checked for those and would know if they were inside one).

"How are you feeling now?" She asks, observing the humans.

"Still weird." Ryan answers first, and Yaz nods in agreement.

"Interesting." The Doctor nods to herself. "Still feel like we're being watched?" She asks, her voice surprisingly casual.

"...Yes." Yaz answers, eyeing the closest doorway, despite not being able to see much anything in there. 

"What do you think is watching?" The Doctor adds, voice still calm.

"I don't know. Just...something." Yaz explains, quietly. “Something intelligent.”

"You can't see it?"

" _YOU CAN_??" Yaz's voice sounds extra loud after all the whispering, and more than a little bit sharp. At almost exactly the same time, Ryan starts to move his camera around again and joins in,

"You can _see something in here with us?!_ "

"No!" The Doctor hurries to correct the situation. "I mean, I don't think there's anything in here. Other than us, anyways." 

Both of the humans stare at her, waiting for an explanation.

"It's an old house. The wiring is faulty. It's causing some overlapping electromagnetic fields right around this area, and-" the Doctor makes a vague hand gesture towards the two of them, "-your funky little human brains mistook the input for sensing an unseen presence."

Yaz takes a deep breath. "So there aren't ghosts in here?"

"Not that I know of, no." The Doctor nods.

Ryan looks up. "Then can we please get out of here? I would very much like to not sense any presences anymore."

"I could probably fix it." The Doctor notes, with a shrug.

"You can fix it during daylight hours." Yaz answers, already walking towards the exit. 

Ryan follows, doing a final sweep of the room with the camera, and the Doctor gives him a thumbs up. 

"BYE GHOSTS!" She yells, right before walking out the front door.


End file.
